Memo to Nancy Pelosi: Lying Is Wrong

Nancy Pelosi says "deem and pass" is her preferred strategy
for pushing health care reform through. And she is apparently surprised
by the ferocious reaction. The self-executing rule is not an unusual,
esoteric technique, she notes. There was no such ferocity before. It
has been used countless times. Its constitutionality is not in
question. So what's the problem?

Let me explain.

So far
as the legality or regularity of the procedure is concerned, Pelosi is
correct. Reconciliation does raise a substantive issue: whether the
Senate filibuster serves a rightful quasi-constitutional purpose. But
if you accept that use of reconciliation is justified in the present
case, as I do, "deem and pass" raises no further issue of that
sort--because it is procedurally identical to the House passing the
Senate bill and a reconciliation sidecar along with it.

My test
of "procedurally identical" is simple. Suppose the House passes
Pelosi's rule, and then the Senate fails to pass the reconciliation
alterations to its own measure. Would the unamended Senate bill,
assuming the president signs the right paper, then become law?
According to what I am told, the answer is yes. "Deem and pass" has
exactly the same legislative function for the House as passing the
Senate bill and separately passing the reconciliation changes.

Which
raises the question, why do it? Pelosi says, because many of her
members do not want to vote for the Senate bill. But if I understand
this procedure correctly, that is what they will be doing, with the
possible consequence that the Senate bill eventually becomes law. What
Pelosi is saying, almost in these very words, is that she wants her
members to be able to vote for the Senate bill while telling their
voters back home they have not. Her method may be procedurally correct.
It is also, quite explicitly, cover for her members to lie to their
voters.

What, she asks, is wrong with that? She and her
supporters seem genuinely puzzled, so I had better spell it out. (1)
Lying to voters is wrong. (2) Doing it so
nakedly insults their intelligence (which, in addition, is unwise).

Pelosi
is equally perplexed, I imagine, by the fact that she and the
institution she leads are held in such contempt by the people of this
country.

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